Not Applicable
Not Applicable
This is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 09/676,638 Filed Sep. 30, 2000.
The present invention is a reaction thrusting power plant, which requires a source of electric power such as can be provided with beamed microwave energy, and which may be configured as a ramjet, turbojet engine, or as thrust augmenter for other types of reaction thrusters.
The types of propulsion systems which create a propulsion force known as thrust to propel vehicles at high altitudes are the rocket motor and the jet engine. The propulsion force is the reaction force arising from increasing the backward momentum of a mass ejected rearward by the action of the propulsion system. In the case of the rocket motor, the rearward ejected mass comes from the propellant chemicals carried with the vehicle, and the backward momentum results from the increased rearward velocity of the products of an exothermic reaction between those propellant chemicals. In the case of the jet engine, addition of heat energy to a controlled flow of air passing through the jet engine increases the backward momentum of the airflow.
The typical well known turbo-jet engine includes a multi-stage axial compressor joined to a turbine having one or more stages for driving the compressor through an axial drive shaft. Between the compressor and the turbine, fuel is mixed with the compressed air from the compressor in a combustion chamber and then ignited for generating hot exhaust gas which is channeled through the turbine, thereby driving the turbine. The remaining momentum of the exhaust gases provides the impulse for jet propulsion. In a ramjet engine the necessity for a turbine driven compressor is eliminated by an air intake which compresses air by the movement of the engine through the atmosphere. The ramjet may also include shutter vanes which prevent burning gases in the combustion chamber from escaping in the forward direction of the engine through the atmosphere.
A jet engine may also typically include a thrust augmenter known as an afterburner which is downstream from the combustion chamber and which injects fuel into the exhaust gas for additional combustion to increase engine thrust before final discharge from the engine. Such thrust increase occurs partially as a result of the increase in the mass of gas exhausted, and partially due to the additional velocity imparted to the exhaust gas by the additional combustion.
Some of the features of the present invention disclosed here as the xe2x80x9celectric thruster and thrust augmenterxe2x80x9d, which may be referred to hereinafter simply as the xe2x80x9celectric thrusterxe2x80x9d, relate to features of jet engines and afterburners, but with electric power as the source of energy for heating and imparting momentum to the exhaust gases. Unlike conventional jet engines which burn chemical fuel with gases taken in by the turbine compressor, the electric thruster uses an electrode chamber to rapidly heat compressed atmospheric gases in order to energize them sufficiently to produce thrust. The electrode chamber of the electric thruster includes an arrangement of electrodes which direct an electric current through the compressed gases of sufficient intensity achieve such rapid heating.
The use of electric power to create reaction thrust is well known from ion thrusters, which accelerate ionized matter to high velocities to produce thrust with minimum mass burden, from magnetohydrodynamic devices which accelerate ionized gases with magnetic fields directly, as in the case of U.S. Pat. No. 3,535,586 by Sabol, or indirectly, as in the case of U.S. Pat. No. 3,138,919 by Deutsch, which uses a magnetic field to heat the ionized gas by the magnetic compression method known as the magnetic bottle. Although magnetic field producing devices may be used as final stages for exhaust acceleration in conjunction with the present invention, magnetohydrodynamic effects are not employed to heat or otherwise increase the velocity of the compressed gases within the electrode chamber, and it is only within the electrode chamber that heat energy is imparted to the compressed gases. The use of electric power is also known from the arcjet, which energizes a propellant to sufficient velocity to produce thrust, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,995,231, 4,926,632, 4,907,407, 4,882,465, 4,866,929, 4,805,400, and 4,800,716. The reaction thrusters disclosed in the arcjet patents, however, use a stored propellant supplied to an arc chamber for heating, and do not use gases compressed within or by a reaction thruster, particularly atmospheric gases. It is also to be noted that in both of the magnetohydrodynamic devices mentioned the means for ionizing the gas to be accelerated is an electric arc, which merely requires sufficient voltage to induce a minimal current flow without substantially heating the gas. Thus, such a current flow which serves only to ionize a gas should be distinguished from the intense current flow necessary to rapidly heat compressed atmospheric gases to produce thrust without acceleration by magnets or by magnetohydrodynamic effects.
The present invention has elements that are covered generally by class 60, power plants, particularly subclasses 203 and 204.
This is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 09/676,638 Filed Sep. 30, 2000.
The present invention is a reaction thrusting power plant, also referred herein as a reaction thruster, which uses intense electric current to heat compressed or previously energized gases, such as compressed atmospheric gases, and exhausts such gasses in order to create thrust. The present invention requires a source of electric power, such as can be provided with beamed microwave energy. Elements of the an electric thruster disclosed herein may also be configured with most other types of reaction thrusters to add velocity to thrusting exhaust as a thrust augmenter, serving a purpose similar to that of an afterburner.
The operation of the electric thruster involves the intake of gases drawn from the atmosphere by an axial compressor or forced in by the forward motion of the electric thruster through the atmosphere, or gases which have been exhausted by another reaction thruster. With compression by a turbine compressor or significant forward motion of the thruster, atmospheric gases may be sent to an electrode chamber where the gases may be rapidly heated by a sufficiently intense electric current conducted between one or more pairs of electrodes with sufficient electrostatic potential. The heated gases are then allowed to expand within an appropriate exhaust nozzle to produce thrust. Such heating and expansion results in a greater velocity of the exhausted gases. Before being exhausted to provide reaction thrust, the heated atmospheric gases from the electrode chamber may flow through and power an axial turbine. The highly ionized gases of the exhaust may in turn be further accelerated by an ion acceleration thrust augmenter, which accelerates the positively charged ions in the exhaust with negatively charged grids or radio-frequency waves to increase the average velocity of the thrust producing exhaust.
Another embodiment of the invention as a thrust augmenter may be used in tandem with any type of reaction thruster which exhausts gases the velocity of which may be increased by heating by an electric current conducted through the gases. In such a thrust augmenter the energetic exhaust gases are sent to an electrode chamber where they may be further heated by electric current between one or more pairs of electrodes and further expanded, thereby increasing the velocity of the gases and increasing thrust.